NEW YORK—VM’s Global Leadership Summit has blossomed into a springtime tradition of sorts, heralding a new season filled with fresh ideas and exciting concepts spanning cutting edge trends in technology, health care and business. For the 6th year in a row, decision makers within the optical community gathered here before the start of Vision Expo East for thought-provoking discussion, dialogue and guidance, with presentations from experts both within and outside the optical arena.

The theme of this year’s Summit: Innovation Everywhere—Embracing Creativity: Rethinking Competition hit all the right notes and then some. The day-long event, held at The Times Center in midtown Manhattan on March 21, drew more than 300 attendees. Topics presented by this year’s speakers covered eye opening new technologies, such as a smartphone attachment that allows the users to assess their visual acuity and an artificial retina that enables the blind to see. Other speakers offered a glimpse of changes that promise to disrupt day-to-day ways of doing business and new models that are influencing all businesses.

Fitting the “Innovation Everywhere” theme, the lead sponsor of this year’s event, Essilor was named among The World’s Most Innovative Companies by Forbes magazine. For more on Essilor, see page S8. Supporting sponsors of the VM Summit were Alcon, CareCredit, DAC Vision, Luxottica, Shamir and International Vision Expo.

On the following pages, you’ll find a comprehensive recap of the day’s events and highlights of the five sessions as well as pictures of both speakers and attendees. For more on the VM Summit, including PDFs of presentations and a slide show, be sure to visit
VisionMondaySummit.com/2012. Look for videos of the presentations, including Q&A sessions and interviews with attendees, coming soon to the Summit website.
■—A VM Staff Report